


i a m b i c

by TopHat



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Gen, Healthy Coping Mechanisms, Songs, nopowers!AU, repairing family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:40:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23235601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TopHat/pseuds/TopHat
Summary: Taylor finds a hobby to deal with her pain. No powers.
Kudos: 15





	i a m b i c

Words. Mom loved them, loved them so much she used them instead of her body when she could, told us she loved us instead of showing us, wrote stories for birthdays instead of buying them, sang poems instead of scrawling in cards.  
  
Words. They hurt.  
  
I toss another ruined school bag into the corner of my room. Another rotten day, more proof that Emma is no longer Emma, a further expense of time and spirit. And for what? Winslow is a hole, a hole amongst holes, and there isn’t a teacher there that knows more than a book filled with the right words.  
  
I pull down a book, a nice one, one that Mom inherited from her Dad, and thumb through it until I reach _Hamlet_. I mutter the soliloquy to myself, eternally lyrical, trying to wash away the day with words and rhythm and meter and age. When that one doesn’t work I turn to _Twelfth Night_ , attempt to banish the broken shards of self cutting up my throat with Feste’s banter, with jokes as lewd as anything but told in the spirit of joy, of festivity, a joke meant to make people laugh, not cry. I read through his sonnets, some heart breaking, some heart warming, trying to find anything to give my heart life again.  
  
Nothing works.  
  


* * *

  
  
It’s words that distract me, that pull me away from grocery shopping and into the cafe, that prompt me to buy a cup of tea and sit down. I recognize the beat, the back-and-forth of stressed and unstressed, the matching syllables, but it’s not Shakespeare, it’s too modern for that, a song about love that’s not about growing old, metaphors with both water and machine, a reference I don’t get, all layered in a way that words don’t get when muttered under your breath in a bathroom stall. (wave)  
  
“Like it?” I blink. The barista is looking at me, a smile on his face. He’s not well shaven, like he’s trying for the rough model look, but with a jawline that’s too round for it. He has plugs in his ears, barely big enough for a pinky finger, and I can see a green and blue tattoo peeking out from under his flannel. “You can get it off the internet for free, if you want.”  
  
“Thanks,” I say. After a moment I walk out of the coffee shop, shaking my head.  
  
Words.  
  


* * *

  
  
It becomes routine. I go shopping every week, to the same places, buying the same things, nodding as the same people pass by. Housewives, single college students, night-shift workers with bags under their eyes that suppress yawns as they shove cans of green beans into sparse baskets.  
  
It’s afterwards that’s the treat.  
  
I walk into the coffee shop. Peter already has a mug on the bar, and sends me a wink as I pick it up and walk to the corner, where a worn armchair appeared after the first month of my visits.  
  
“Ready for your fix?” he asks. I nod, a cautious smile creeping up on me as I warm my fingers around the ceramic, feeling the inexpertly-etched pictures on the side. Peter steps over to a laptop plugged into a stand by the register, and music start spilling out.  
  
This time it’s about being stuck in a rut, about being put down, and about perseverance. It’s about growth, a guy who cuts ties and comes out ahead, who uses his hobby to escape a bad situation.  
  
I savor the taste of the tea.  
  
It’s a nice fantasy.  
  
“You know, there’s going to be an open mike at Alexi’s in a few days.” I give Peter a questioning look. He shrugs. “Most of them are going to be pretty bad, but there’s always one kid who comes on and knocks everyone flat. Promise.”  
  
“I’ll think about it,” I say.  
  


* * *

  
  
I come back late, half a dozen emotions rolling around in my stomach. Some of it’s excitement, a runner’s high and near-manic giggling from going to see a live performance, filled with cheering and movement and sweat. Some of it’s awe at the boldness of the pimple-faced teenagers and twenty-something that stepped up to the stage, headlong into the lights and critics, taking boos and cheers with equal firmness.  
  
And a little bit of it is longing.  
  
I undress, shower, and slip into bed, mind racing, dashing back in time, to the era of Emma and summer sleepovers and cookies made with our mothers. I clutch a pillow to my chest, the warmth tainted, the high soured, and try to recapture other pleasant times, the ones that don’t make me think of Monday, of the return to school, to the grind. I try and I fail, the last of the joy dripping away, hate oozing into its place, vicious and black and caustic and burning me up inside, setting my teeth on edge as the blaze reaches my eyes, _why can’t I just be happy_ -  
  
I snarl and roll out of bed. It’s too much to vocalize, to explain. I can’t say that I hate school, that I hate Emma, that I forgive her, that I understand what’s going on. I stomp over to my desk, grab a pen, and tear a current events notebook out of my backpack. I flip to the back page and start scribbling.  
  
As the night grows old, as late turns into early, my emotions flag. The tar-like mess inside me pushed through my arm, out of my fingers, and onto the page, leaving me drained and panting. I look at the story on the page, with jagged lines and uneven pacing, with asymmetric beats and no clear structure or scheme.  
  
It’s not complete. But it’s something to look forward to.  
  


* * *

  
  
I keep working on... the thing.  
  
It’s not a story, not like Gatsby, not like Dalloway, almost like Beowulf, but with less murder and more misery. I keep my head down, put up with Emma and Sophia and Madison and all their cronies, and at the end of every day I got back to working on the thing. Eventually, it gets too big for one piece, so I break it up, scrap what I have, and start writing about half a dozen different things, trying to find the idea that they all illuminate. I fuel myself with words, with the space between poetry and music, and save up enough to get a music player, putting the same tracks on repeat when I get stuck, trying to see where my thoughts overlap.  
  
I keep going to the music nights. The crowd is mostly college students and random blue collar workers, but I’m not the youngest person there. There’s a girl who always comes sporting bruises, a be-speckled boy who wears a button-up shirt left way too far open, and a few more who don’t look out of middle school. No one questions our presence, and from time to time a can of beer gets offered to me, tab still unopened.  
  
Dad doesn’t press. At all. I start a different story, one about him, not Emma. It comes from a different place, adjacent to the hole she left but with none of its ragged edges, less transcription and more longing for better days and possible futures. I think about what was and try to make sense of what it would be like today, think about what is and think about where they could go, then think about what’s probably going to happen and pull it full circle, thinking about ways to prevent it. It’s all fantasy, dreaming, wonder, but it helps, thinking about Dad.  
  
I need to talk to him.  
  


* * *

  
  
It’s in Mr. Gladly’s class that I hear the beat.  
  
I’m zoning out of the lecture, enduring Madison’s projectiles, searching for the most minute source of distraction, when I pick up rhythm. It’s subtle, just fingers on wood, but it’s there, as formal Milton. Slowly, subtly, I shift in my seat, trying to triangulate the source.  
  
It’s Sparky, staring at the ceiling, hands dancing across the desk in an unusually coherent melody. Knuckles make up the majority of the notes, with the occasional punctuating _thump_ when the ball of his hand smacks into the wood. It’s rapid, regular, rhythmic, a perfect backtrack to-  
  
I shake my head, refocusing away from the stoner. I don’t compose at school. Too risky. I still don’t know what I’m going to with the words, but an idea is forming.  
  
When Computer Science rolls around, I throw my pre-completed assignment into the ‘finished’ folder and start looking at production software. There’s a lot of super-expensive packages, but there’s also a lot of free stuff, things that can be done with a keyboard and a mouse. I check forums, message boards, customer reviews, winnowing down my potential tools until just one remains. I scrawl down its name, then duck out of school early.  
  
It wasn't like I was going to learn anything.  
  
I head back home, pick up my meager savings, then to Boardwalk. I skip past the high-end music store, past the second-hand instruments, until I get to the yard sales. There I wander, skipping anything that looks too complex, anything fancy. I don’t have the budget for that. Instead, I look for dust, seeping into well-worn grooves or barely touched layers pure as snow. I look for lazy people looking to get another joint for the crap in their garage.  
  
Eventually I find a girl in a sports bra, loose tank top, and cargo shorts fanning herself next to a pile of cardboard boxes, one unopened. Cassio.  
  
“How much for the board?” I ask, pointing.  
  
“Fifty,” she pants.  
  
“I’ll give you twenty five,” I counter.  
  
“Thirty,” she says, sticking out a hand. I dig two fives and twenty out, press the bills into her hand, and grab my purchase before she can think twice.  
  
When I get home I’m too tired to set it up. Instead I settle for flipping through the instruction manual, thinking.  
  


* * *

  
  
It takes a week for me to figure out how to make something other than noise, for the knobs to lose their foreign-ness and become something I play and not something that makes me cry. I play with headphones jacked into it, focusing on patterns, on making something that works. I get lost in my new toy, exploring its limits, then falling back well within them.  
  
Then I hit my second hurdle.  
  
Our computer was old. I knew that. I didn’t know it was so old that it was incompatible with even the most basic production tech, that its specs were so shit I’d be lucky to be able to use the next generation of YouTube on it. I stare at the error message on my screen for too long, then close it out and go back to the notebook which I haven’t taken notes in for at least a month, channeling the glass-clear almost-ness into more words.  
  
The crash stays through school, a shard stuck in my brain, warping my world around it. I ghost through Madison’s bucket of water in gym, through Emma’s subtle knives, through Sophia’s shoves.  
  
I drift.  
  


* * *

  
  
Dad and I have dinner together. Pizza, almost cold before it hits the table. We eat in silence, both conscious of the third place we set every time and leave unused but not talking about it.  
  
I look up across the table. “Dad, how bad do we need money?”  
  
He looks back. Apathetic would be too strong to describe the crinkle around his eyes, and tired would be cliche. Dispassionate, maybe. Worn, like a pair of comfortable boots that need to be replaced. Maybe it’s something indescribable, something I can’t ever describe, but I can try.  
  
“Why?” he asks.  
  
“I’d like a new computer.” It’s out of me. Now I’m committed. “For my music stuff. To put things together and record.”  
  
He blinks, letting the silence stretch on.  
  
“The one we have is kinda...” I trail off, uncertain how to explain it. How do I tell him about the not-stories, not-poems? How do I tell him about the way syllables rest on one another, how fragile it is, like spun sugar, how it gets a foundation from something small, something almost forgettable, which I still can’t build without? How do I tell him that I’m sick of just seeing sentences, of just hearing myself, of not being able to share, of not taking risks?  
  
How do I words to him?  
  
Slowly, Dad sits up, years vanishing from his face, weight falling from his shoulders. He looks around, eyes clearing, a storm front passing by, and he really takes in the house. He looks at me, green orbs sharp for the first time in recent memory.  
  
“I’ve missed a lot, haven’t I?” he says softly.  
  
I nod, swallowing a lump in my throat. “Yeah.”  
  
He looks at the pizza on his plate, then pushes it away, standing up, towering. I keep forgetting how tall he is, how he could get big enough to boss around even the most belligerent Dockworkers. He smiles, shaky, fragile, but fresh, green stems through snow.  
  
“This pizza sucks. Want to go out to eat?”  
  
“Sure,” I say, blinking a few times. I pull off my glasses, rub my eyes, then put them back on, standing up. “Sure.”  
  


* * *

  
  
Things changed after that.  
  
Dad still spent the majority of his day at work. The difference is that this time when he came back, he talked to me. Little things, inane things, the everyday stuff that doesn’t matter so much in the grand scheme of things. He was still tired when he settled down on the sofa and put on an old Humphrey Bogart movie every Friday night, but he wasn’t _empty_. Just tired.  
  
Things were happening around the house. The front step finally got fixed. The rugs got cleaned, the floors swept, and I noticed some the trashier furniture disappear. The living room was emptier, but a good empty. Spacious.  
  
Dad started leaving things on the counter for me in the mornings. Sometimes it was a note, a little request he didn’t put on the shopping list. Sometimes it was a candy bar, to help me get through the day.  
  
One day it was a a computer, not even out of the box, and I skipped school, just setting it up. For the first time I would be able to edit my own voice, to hear myself speak, and to learn from it.  
  
I giggled myself silly messing with a burp.  
  
Dad had changed. He was ironing his shirts and smiling, causing years, a decade, more, to fall away from his face. He gave off a feeling of renewed power, of a freshly-woken horse. He started shaving closer, got a shorter haircut, and started putting on weight.  
  
The new things, the new Dad, they didn’t make school any easier. They did make it easier to cope though.  
  


* * *

  
  
I knew that I had a problem when I opened up my Math notebook and couldn’t find a single empty page to take notes on.  
  
I flip through it, nonplussed. On the one hand, I should probably ask someone else for paper to take notes on. On the other hand, I don’t think anyone would give any to me. To do so would be to arouse the wrath of the Trio and invite disaster upon themselves, and I can’t be mad about people trying to avoid that. Eventually I just close the notebook and stare at the lecturer, trying to absorb the knowledge with just my brain.  
  
About a third of the way through the class I realize that I’m not learning anything.  
  
Oh, I know how triangles work. I can solve equations. I can figure out what variables were worth. It doesn’t feel like anything though, just a list of boxes I check off because it was What You Did. I think about my other classes, about Current Events, about English, about every single thing I was supposed to know how to do by the time I graduated. It all makes sense in an abstract sense, if I look at out of the corner of my eye, but when I try to imagine actually using the knowledge for something profitable...  
  
Nothing.  
  
The bell rings. I just spent the entire class staring blankly forward without missing anything. As the other kids get up, chatting and planning for the next class, I stay seated.  
  
Why am I here?  
  
I can’t come up with a single reason.  
  
“Taylor?” I jumped a little. The math professor (I couldn’t remember his name) is giving me a look. “You’re going to be late if you don’t get moving.”  
  
I nod. “You’re right.” I stay seated for a moment longer, then put away my already-full notebook and leave the class. I turn right, away from Mrs. Knott’s computer science class and towards the entrance of the school.  
  


* * *

  
  
“You should get up there,” Peter says as we applaud a girl hopping off the stage.  
  
“I’d have to write something to perform,” I counter. “I’d need a backtrack, I’d need to watch all those people watch me, I’d freak out and jump off before the first verse is over-”  
  
“No guts no glory,” he interrupts, letting his hands fall as someone else stands up, a sheet of paper clearly torn out of a notebook in his hands. “Waiting for a perfect opportunity is just procrastination. Hell, even if you just cover something that’d be cool. You’ve got the voice for it.”  
  
I groan and shake my head. Apparently when I’m thinking over words I mutter to myself, and I mutter _fast_. Peter caught me at it one day at the coffee shop and now he won’t stop pestering me about performing. “It’s ninety-nine percent crap. I’m not making anyone listen to that.”  
  
“So show us the one percent that isn’t,” he says, lightly tapping me on the shoulder with a fist. When I don’t respond, he sighs. “If you go up once, I’ll give you free tea for a week.”  
  
I give him a skeptical look. “Can you afford that?” I ask. Indie shops tend to have lean times in Brockton Bay, and losing the profit from regular customers tends to be bad for business.  
  
Peter shrugs. “I’ve had a few good months. Think of it as a commision.” He adds in a smile. “If it goes bad, I’ll throw in a brownie.”  
  
I mull it over, clapping absentmindedly as the guy on stage wraps up his verses. I’m already thinking of ways to restructure his story, his verses. When I get home, I’m probably going to add another story to my ever-growing pile, fill another two or three pages with near-poetry, then throw together a basic beat at roughly the right speed.  
  
I probably have a few hundred songs put together. If ninety-nine percent of them are crap, that means one percent might not be. Call it five that are good. I pick one of those five, try it out, and save a few bucks a week I’d normally spend on tea. Worst case scenario, I don’t show my face here for a few weeks and fade into the background with every other stuttering high schooler that tries and fails.  
  
“I’ll think about it,” I say.  
  


* * *

  
  
“The school called me.”  
  
I nod, heart going from steady tempo to jackhammer panic in about two seconds. “About what?” I ask with a calm I don’t feel. I put down the knife and turn around, leaning against the kitchen counter to steady my hands.  
  
“Apparently you’ve missed class. A lot.” He’s standing up, both hands on the back of a chair in front of him. He doesn’t look angry. He doesn’t look irritated. Curious, if anything, but mostly blank. “If you skip two more days of class they’re going to automatically fail you.”  
  
“I was sick,” I respond automatically. A lie, and not even a good one.  
  
Dad shakes his head, his eyes never leaving mine. “Then why are you cooking? Why does your voice sound better than ever? Why did I see you shopping when I went out to lunch?”  
  
My heart stops. Shopping. The routine. The tea and words.  
  
How much did he see?  
  
For a long moment, we just stare at each other.  
  
Then he sighs and for a moment I see all the missing age and stress come back.  
  
“Taylor, please,” he says quietly. “If it’s a boy, if it’s drugs, I don’t care. I just want to know if you’re safe. Is it something about the school? Some I can help with? Something I can’t? Please,” he _begs_ , hands gripping tighter, knuckles going white and wood creaking, “Please just let me in.”  
  
I stay silent, staring at him, wide eyed.  
  
Then I slowly push away from the counter and head up the stairs. Dad follows up after me. I unlock my door, then walk over to my desk. I hear Dad make a noise at the sheer number of notebooks nearly spilling over the edges, but it’s a distant stimulus, a mountaintop I can see from some point in a plain so very far away.  
  
I pull open one marked with red and green sharpie, one filled with stories about poisoned friendships and broken memories. I flip through the pages until I come to the one about our first meeting after camp.  
  
Then I let the words flow.  
  


* * *

  
  
“OhmygodthisisstupidInevershould’vevomewhatwasIthinkingyouhavetoletmego-”  
  
“Taylor, chill,” Peter said, holding onto my shoulders, gently but firmly. “You’re freaking out way too much. It’s the same as any other Saturday, it’s the same crowd, they’re not going to-”  
  
“Remembermeforeverandneverletmeliveitdownthisistheworsttheworsttheworstit’scanceledI’mjustgoingtogohomeandwords-”  
  
“Taylor, what’s so scary about them?” Peter asked, throwing up both hands. “You know half the people here! Half of them have gone up there and you applauded them even when they’re not good! They’re going to reciprocate.”  
  
“Nononoit’sdifferentwithmeIdon’twanttoriskitIcan’ttrustthemthey’rejustwaitingformetomessuppleaseletmerunaway-”  
  
“Here!” I stop, staring at the sleep mask Peter was holding out to me. “You don’t want to look at them right?” I nod once. “If you can’t see them, they can’t see you.”  
  
I look Peter dead in the eye. “Are you stupid?” I ask.  
  
“It stopped you from panicking, didn’t it?” He smiles, covering his eyes with his hands. “See? You don’t exist.”  
  
I look at the mask, then at Peter, then back to the mask.  
  
Eventually I groan, then pull off my glasses, put on the mask, and hang the glasses on the collar of my shirt.  
  
“Tell them to be really, really quiet,” I say, gritting my teeth. I don’t see them, they don’t exist. No one but me, words, and the back track.  
  
Slowly, Peter guides me onto the stage. I hear a few mutters, but it really is only a few. Something cold and surprisingly heavy is pressed into my hand. Peter taps me twice on the shoulder and I am alone.  
  
Then the back track starts up and I fall back to what I know.  
  
Stand up straight, throw out the shoulders, make sure air can flow, move around a little, keep the imaginary (only imaginary) audience engaged, wait for a full measure to go by and-  
  


* * *

  
  
_“I don’t claim to complain about what matters to me_  
  
_‘Cause I kept getting ignored by the powers that be._  
  
_No lies, no stories, no sort of excuse,_  
  
_That's not the sort of story I want to produce._  
  
_I’m not hanging around here to blow up my mind_  
  
_I spend every day right here just to stay on my grind._  
  
_To get the words to take flight and pull me away_  
  
_To get me right the hell up and out of this god awful Bay._  
  
_The beats come out from my fingers, from my toes_  
  
_The words right out from under my nose._  
  
_And it’s all mine, of that you can be assured_  
  
_The end-product of what I’ve endured._  
  
_I don’t claim to complain about shit that’s happened to me,_  
  
_But if you think a little more about the girls that you see_  
  
_The ones that get ignored by the powers that be_  
  
_Then maybe I’ll talk a little bit about shit that I saw_  
  
_But hey,_  
  
_It’s just a story.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Inspiration for this snip:
> 
> 22, Abstract
> 
> Darkest Places, Abstract
> 
> Weatherman, Kid Quill
> 
> Hammer, nothing,nowhere.
> 
> Flowers, K.A.A.N.
> 
> Mary Jane, K.A.A.N.
> 
> Concealed in the Outro, K.A.A.N.
> 
> More than Music II, Ollie


End file.
